Dumbass tag? Not spouting off on social media is possibly the smartest thing anybody has done in the wake of this tragedy. And they're going to get pilloried anyway, this way they can wait until the emotions and hysterical overreaching die down.

Am I the only one who has a problem with the media in this country, about how narcissistic and fame-obsessed we are? About how the ability to vomit up an opinion on anything that the entire world can see has seemingly eradicated the expectation or responsibility to be informed and thoughtful?

An Assault Weapons Ban would not have prevented this mass shooting or most others that have happened. Columbine, VA Tech, Tucson, Aurora, you name it was done with a semi-auto handgun, not an assault rifle.

Making any kind of change to gun law enforcement (we need stronger enforcement of the current laws, not new ones IMO) is going to be seen in our government in the same light as legalization of marijuana.

There is too much money in the way things work right now to make any kind of meaningful change. It's about money, not about peace.

A guy walking into an elementary school with a pair of handguns and murdering 20 kids and 8 adults doesn't strike me as an indictment of our failure to pass a comprehensive assault weapons ban. It's an indictment of our healthcare system. If you want to make it easy for people to buy guns, then you have to make it even easier for people to seek medical help for mental disorders. Otherwise the nutcases will deal with their problems using the former rather than the latter. It seems pretty straight-forward.

"There is a reason why you haven't heard a single word from the NRA and why they have taken down their Facebook page with 1.7million fans "

Yeah, they're cowards. How's that news?

I say if we're going to ban all guns then Washington DC should lead by example - what you DO is what you really believe. First the whole city including the entirety of federal law enforcement, secret service, capital police, then the military. If banning guns is automatically a good thing than we should taken away from those that rack up the highest body counts first, that would be government. If that's the way to be safe then the capital building and the white house should be made into an instant gun-free zone protected only with billy clubs.

Oh, but they're our glorious leaders that need special protection that us mere plebes don't require because we're simply not as important.

Ensure that names of convicted drug abusers, domestic abusers and hospitalized or adjucated mentally ill are added to the federal database against which gun sellers must check prospective buyers

Prosecute people with criminal records who lie on background check forms when they try to buy guns

That would be the true nature of the laws talked about now, yes. But if you ask the NRA, the laws are intended to make it so no one can buy, hold, or even look at a gun without committing a felony. It's that farked up. As long as "assault weapons" doesn't become some bureaucratic loophole to get everything, of course.

\pro-gun rights\\but you'd have to be retarded to think that your list is anti-gun rights

Dinki:If you think we have put any where near the full might of the US military into those fights you are a fool.

You really don't know that people were deployed far longer and far more often than we were ever supposed to allow because of how thin our military was stretched? Or are you seriously arguing that because we used to have more people in the military decades ago we didn't actually spend most of a decade in those hellholes?

The point is that asymmetric warfare is asymmetric. It doesn't respond to larger force (up to the point of genocide, at least) like conventional warfare does - that's why we could kick the piss out of the Iraqi military twice in a row, but be bogged down for nearly a decade by assholes taping bombs to bicycles and hiding as civilians.

NEDM:Don't forget all the ATF hoops you have to jump through to get them. It's hard to use a weapon in a crime if you've told the federal government you have it and allow them to search you at any time. It's simply not worth the effort or risk.

THE GUNS ARE NOT GOING AWAY. THEY ARE HERE AND THEY ALWAYS WILL BE. The solution to the problem is about getting over our obsession with violence and retribution and approaching mental health as a public health issue. Nothing is going to solve the problem instantly and permanently.

LandOfChocolate:Dinki: Because if we don't And even if we do, we will be seeing more of these massacres. And everyone knows it.

FTFY

Sigh. Yes, because we all know those crazy people are actually master criminals that would have access to the black market of guns. Or are you saying that if they didn't have guns they would find some other way to kill many people quickly? Maybe we should ask the 22 students that were attacked in china by a crazy person the same day as the Newtown massacre. And we can ask them, because they are all still alive. And why is that? because the crazy person had to use a knife and not a gun.

What demonstrable benefit results from prohibiting a subclass of an already rarely criminally misused class of firearm (all rifles of any type are less commonly used to commit murder than are unarmed attacks) based upon characteristics that do not affect firearm function?

Prohibit the sale of high-capacity magazines

What is a "high-capacity" magazine? Frequently, "high-capacity" is dishonestly defined as capacities greater than capacities smaller than the standard magazines of many popular handguns and rifles.

Fix the gun show loophole

Please describe the "gun show loophole". Explain how it is derived from existing law and how it relates specifically to "gun shows".

Make gun trafficking a felony

Firearm trafficking is already a felony offense. It is unfortunately not enforced frequently.

Ensure that names of convicted drug abusers, domestic abusers and hospitalized or adjucated mentally ill are added to the federal database against which gun sellers must check prospective buyers

Currently, federal law already requires this.

Prosecute people with criminal records who lie on background check forms when they try to buy guns

This, unfortunately, is not done frequently. When I last investigated the matter, fewer than 10% of prohibited persons who attempted to obtain a firearm from a licensed seller were prosecuted after denial.

I have heard it is a misnomer, but the basic gist is that if you are a 'private seller' conducting a 'private transaction' then you don't have to perform background checks. (If I recall correctly)

I think it's called the 'gun show loophole' due to people arguing that there will, amazingly, be a LOT of these 'private sellers' at gunshows, so they don't have to pay to do background checks (and/or can sell without having to do them). Whether or not that is true, I don't know.

The awb never worked. Why do people insist in bringing it back when there's a mountain of evidence that indicates it did jacksquat? CT has a state version of the awb in place already, btw.

And please, let's be very clear, a 30 cartridge magazine in an ar15 is standard capacity, not high capacity. If a 20 round 9 mm handgun is illegal, they'll just buy a 7 round 45 1911 which is much more powerful round.

I'm a pretty reasonable gun owner who is willing to make some compromises, but I won't even approach it with the hateful rhetoric right now. I feel like some people need to be reminded that this is a right that exists today, and you are going to need some buy-in to reduce those rights.

If you propose a solution, please step back and ask "would this have made a difference?" There are quite a few people who have always hated guns that are seeing this as an opportunity to grind an axe. We should not lightly approach taking away rights, and we should ensure that steps we take would be meaningful.

I generally oppose more gun control laws. Why? because in the past they have been written by clueless politicians who no idea what they are legislating, and the laws often make no sense, are contradictory to other laws, and leave huge loopholes.

I'd support making gun owner legally responsible for their guns. Lock em up. Secure them. Pay the piper if you don't. It's an access issue. Mag and "assault rifle" are largely ineffective and miss the point.

LouDobbsAwaaaay:A guy walking into an elementary school with a pair of handguns and murdering 20 kids and 8 adults doesn't strike me as an indictment of our failure to pass a comprehensive assault weapons ban. It's an indictment of our healthcare system. If you want to make it easy for people to buy guns, then you have to make it even easier for people to seek medical help for mental disorders. Otherwise the nutcases will deal with their problems using the former rather than the latter. It seems pretty straight-forward.

The United States spends 5.6 percent of its health care budget on mental health treatment, which is on par with other developed nations.

Meanwhile, 15 of the 25 worst mass shootings in the last 50 years took place in the United States.

The NRA has nothing to do with this. Remember, exploitation of a tragedy for political reasons is wrong and sick until they're your political reasons.

To put it more bluntly, the Obama administration whom you have been defending to the hilt over Benghazi and howling in rage when anyone tries to hold the administration in any way responsible for it... Is FAR more connected to the deaths of those four Americans than the NRA is to these mass shootings. You're the same bunch of tools who ran around waving your arms and yelling "Islamophobia!" when people started talking about what led up to the Ft. Hood shooting

You know all those religious people whom you keep crying about because they took this chance to run their mouths about what they believe is the problem? Quit acting like them. If you're running around raging at the NRA then take a seat over there with those religious arsehats if you're going to behave like them. Most of all don't fly in to fits of indignant outrage when people "exploit" tragedies for "political" reasons unless you are prepared to stop doing it yourselves.

I've had many days to think about the shooting in CT... I realize at this point that a assault weapons ban will probably happen; the Congress Critters can't exactly fight this type of thing when you have 20 dead kids under age of 7 or so.

However, I think this won't solve the problem. All the weapons that exist currently still will exist, all the "scary" high capacity magazines already out there will exist, making laws banning additional sales of new semi-automatic rifles won't change that.

What we need in this country isn't new gun laws; what we need is in increased healthcare system, specifically more MENTAL HEALTHCARE. There are too many sick people out there that aren't getting the treatment they need, it's easier for them to get access to guns than it is to get access to the medicine they need.

Support curing the sickness, not ignoring the sick people; They don't need guns to hurt people, they'll find another way!

LouDobbsAwaaaay:A guy walking into an elementary school with a pair of handguns and murdering 20 kids and 8 adults doesn't strike me as an indictment of our failure to pass a comprehensive assault weapons ban. It's an indictment of our healthcare system.

In 10 years nothing will have changed and you will still be able to buy a rifle that exactly resembles a bushmaster in everything but name that can carry as many bullets as you want. Forget it jake, its merica.

Zeno-25:An Assault Weapons Ban would not have prevented this mass shooting or most others that have happened. Columbine, VA Tech, Tucson, Aurora, you name it was done with a semi-auto handgun, not an assault rifle.

Since 2009, the NRA and its allies in state capitols have pushed through 99 laws making guns easier to own, easier to carry in public-eight states now even allow them in bars-and harder for the government to track. More than two-thirds of the laws were passed by Republican-controlled legislatures, though often with bipartisan support. Link

SuperT:an M1 was good enough to take down the nazis,M it's good enough to defend my home and shoot pumpkins.

Let me preface this by saying I don't own guns, I don't hunt and I don't have any plans or fantasies about stopping home invaders. That said, an M1 or any long gun is terrible for home defense unless you live in a castle with turrets. The barrel is too long to be effective around tight corners and hallways.

I don't need a 30 round magazine. I'm also ok with having a license to own a firearm/ammo above certain lethality.

Who is to say that this kids mom wouldn't have been able to obtain the required license?

AND I'm ok with mental screens, and universal health care to get the crazies the help they need.

Again, it was the kids mother who owned the firearms. Will you extend the screens to anyone who lives in the residence or who has regular access to it?

Just do what I've done -- accept that these episodes are tragic but inevitable despite our efforts in any direction. Short of burning the Constitution that Jesus brought down from Mt. Sinai, there will always be a contingent afraid that ANY legislation is somewhere on the level of being marched off to the gas chambers or gulags.

Ensure that names of convicted drug abusers, domestic abusers and hospitalized or adjucated mentally ill are added to the federal database against which gun sellers must check prospective buyers

Prosecute people with criminal records who lie on background check forms when they try to buy guns

The first two. They don't do anything save for being punitive measures against legal gun owners, and won't stop or even slow down a mass shooting when it happens. The weapon choice in this shooting was an aberration, almost all mass shootings are done with pistols. That's all Cho used.

If you want to really stop these things from happening, strengthen the fark out of mental health treatment, and limit sales of all weapons so that people who have untreated mental illnesses. Make it possible to force the dangerous cases to get help instead of just watching them go back untreated into society in futility. Don't punish non-crazy people for the acts of a madman, make it so the madman never commits his acts.

Ensure that names of convicted drug abusers, domestic abusers and hospitalized or adjucated mentally ill are added to the federal database against which gun sellers must check prospective buyers

Prosecute people with criminal records who lie on background check forms when they try to buy guns

That would be the true nature of the laws talked about now, yes. But if you ask the NRA, the laws are intended to make it so no one can buy, hold, or even look at a gun without committing a felony. It's that farked up. As long as "assault weapons" doesn't become some bureaucratic loophole to get everything, of course.

\pro-gun rights\\but you'd have to be retarded to think that your list is anti-gun rights

That's my point -- these are all perfectly reasonable things that could and should be done. I'm glad to see that you agree.

Exactly. What a farking waste of breath. We have a government that has never fallen to a military coup, we have one of the most stable democracies in the world, and furthermore, our government has weapons no gun could combat. I don't have an agenda here against guns per se. My mother grew up in a community where everyone owned one and very few people were hurt by them. But this is different. We've crossed some line. We're no longer talking about hunters and ranchers. We're talking about paranoid shiats who are convinced the darkies are coming to get them. They hoard guns and food for the coming apocalypse and we are supposed to be okay with that. I'm not.

To play devil's advocate:

There's protection against the government, and then there's protection against THE GOVERNMENT. Expecting to do anything against the combined weight of the US military is simply stupid, but there's always the possibility that corrupt local authorities could abuse their ability to carry arms.

I think that portraying the "protection against the government" crowd solely as being paranoid against a US military incursion is setting up a little straw man. Sure there are nutter compound-dwellers out there that think the army's going to come knock on their door, but it's not outside the realm of possibility that a local sheriff will grab a few friends and his supply of rifles to oust someone he doesn't like from the community. Not all of the country is full of enlightened local authorities who are out for everyone's best interest. Given a situation where they have guns and no one else does, it's possible some trouble could start.

SuperT:an M1 was good enough to take down the nazis, it's good enough to defend my home and shoot pumpkins. I don't need a 30 round magazine. I'm also ok with having a license to own a firearm/ammo above certain lethality. And I'm ok with a system whereby if you want those arms, you agree to be apart of a regulated defense force in the event of an invasion. (ie, a militia).

AND I'm ok with mental screens, and universal health care to get the crazies the help they need.

Having m16s and m4s won't win you a revolution against the US gov anyway, wide spread civilian support and guerrilla tactics will.

/super libby lib libtard, who also enjoys the shooting sports.crazy I know.

The Atlanta Olympics bomber is an example of insurgency in this country. Eric stayed out years, killing and wounding hundreds of people. But he evidently was taken care of by small numbers of people.

The way I understand it is that sellers at these events are waived from normal requirements regarding background checks, waiting periods, etc.

You are mistaken. Federal law requires that federally licensed sellers conduct a NICS-based background check on any prospective firearm purchaser regardless of where the firearm is transferred. A majority of firearm sellers at gun shows are licensed sellers.

Federal law also prohibits the transfer of firearms between residents of different states, regardless of where the transfer may occur.

Federal law cannot regulate the private transfer of firearms between residents of a single state within that state, as such a transfer is intrastate commerce. Only individual states may regulate such transfers; some do, though some do not.

bulldg4life:I just want to know when people are going to get away from the "guns don't kill people" argument when asking for Holder to get thrown in prison and Obama to be impeached over Fast and Furious

That's before we get to the part where there's no proof Obama knew about it either. Are you going to go full tard and say that a President should be impeached if a criminal act is committed by anyone in the vast federal bureaucracy, even if he has no knowledge of it at the time?

InmanRoshi:LouDobbsAwaaaay: A guy walking into an elementary school with a pair of handguns and murdering 20 kids and 8 adults doesn't strike me as an indictment of our failure to pass a comprehensive assault weapons ban. It's an indictment of our healthcare system. If you want to make it easy for people to buy guns, then you have to make it even easier for people to seek medical help for mental disorders. Otherwise the nutcases will deal with their problems using the former rather than the latter. It seems pretty straight-forward.

The United States spends 5.6 percent of its health care budget on mental health treatment, which is on par with other developed nations.

Meanwhile, 15 of the 25 worst mass shootings in the last 50 years took place in the United States.

The problem probably isn't the sheer amount of spending, but who and what it's being spent on. "Mental health treatment" covers a lot of ground, and I imagine most of that is psychologists or psychotherapists or psychiatrists and prescription drugs.

roddack:Connecticut already had an assault weapon ban in place before this horrible event occurred. The issue continues to be the inability of this country to have a serious talk about mental health

And yet the rifle that was used to kill all of those people is perfectly legal in the state of Connecticut. The law is Connecticut is one of those pathetic examples of loop holes around loop holes. What is the point in banning one assault type weapon and not banning another? All the law does is penalize certain manufacturers while it gives people access to automatic weapons, just not fully automatic.

Mental health is not the issue. What is the good of a mental health program is the people doing all of this shooting have never even been seen by a mental health care professional? How is that going to solve anything?

sprawl15:You really don't know that people were deployed far longer and far more often than we were ever supposed to allow because of how thin our military was stretched?

the reason it was stretched is because we made the conscious decision to not invest the resources necessary. Do you really think that if we thought that Iraq or Afghanistan was a serious threat we wouldn't institute a draft and send not 160,000 troops but 2,000,000?

illegal.tender:LouDobbsAwaaaay: A guy walking into an elementary school with a pair of handguns and murdering 20 kids and 8 adults doesn't strike me as an indictment of our failure to pass a comprehensive assault weapons ban. It's an indictment of our healthcare system.

Why not both?

Prohibiting civilian ownership of a subset of rifles (all rifles are less commonly used to commit murder than are unarmed attacks) based upon characteristics that do not affect function is not likely to affect rates of violent crime at all.

bulldg4life:People always bring up how automatic weapons are hardly ever used in crimes or massacres like this. What was done with automatic weapons to remove them from society in such a way and why can't that be done with other types?

The National Firearms Act of 1934, in reaction to the perceived menace of machine guns in the hands of criminals, was passed that required an (at the time prohibitive) $200 tax stamp to purchase or transfer a machine gun. This allowed legal ownership of them, along with silencers and short-barreled rifles and shotguns, and some other minor categories. Over time, people registered their legally owned machine guns. At one point the $200 transfer tax wasn't that big a deal anymore: A Thompson submachine gun was $200 when the tax was originally passed, effectively doubling the price of an already very expensive gun (That's the equivalent of $3,300 today just for the gun, the tax bringing the price up past the equivalent of $6,600+). By the 1980's, though, inflation in the price of a full-auto Thompson, and just guns in general, made the $200 tax not that much of an obstacle anymore.

In 1986, the supply was cut-off: The Hughes Amendment to the Firearms Owner Protection Act (inserted almost certainly in violation of House rules) cut off the supply permanently: You can't register a machine gun made after 1986, and hence they can't be legally owned. Machine guns in the registry prior to the cut-off can be transferred, but because the supply is fixed, the prices are insanely high.

In the end, you couldn't do this because of Heller. The Heller decision allows that prohibitions on the carrying of "dangerous and unusual weapons" may be constitutional, but that those "in common use at the time" are protected. Semiautomatic rifles and pistols are in common use at this time, and are commonly used for core Second Amendment purposes.

While I can't stand the NRA and their mindless slippery slope defenses that get in the way of common sense ideas, I don't know how to make much progress on gun control.

Banning assault weapons is mostly a cosmetic ban, unless you are willing to ban semi-auto rifles altogether. You can't ban hand guns because of Heller. That leaves you with high capacity magazines, which means the same nut will just have to reload a few more times between slayings.

I think the truth is that barring a constitutional change and an abandonment of gun culture, we aren't going to change anything. Maybe it will look different if the nuts keep killing white children in bunches.

please:I'm a pretty reasonable gun owner who is willing to make some compromises, but I won't even approach it with the hateful rhetoric right now. I feel like some people need to be reminded that this is a right that exists today, and you are going to need some buy-in to reduce those rights.

If you propose a solution, please step back and ask "would this have made a difference?" There are quite a few people who have always hated guns that are seeing this as an opportunity to grind an axe. We should not lightly approach taking away rights, and we should ensure that steps we take would be meaningful.

I generally oppose more gun control laws. Why? because in the past they have been written by clueless politicians who no idea what they are legislating, and the laws often make no sense, are contradictory to other laws, and leave huge loopholes.

I'd support making gun owner legally responsible for their guns. Lock em up. Secure them. Pay the piper if you don't. It's an access issue. Mag and "assault rifle" are largely ineffective and miss the point.

If this is truly your problem, the answer is to write better legislation, not to give up on regulation altogether.

randomjsa:The NRA has nothing to do with this. Remember, exploitation of a tragedy for political reasons is wrong and sick until they're your political reasons.

To put it more bluntly, the Obama administration whom you have been defending to the hilt over Benghazi and howling in rage when anyone tries to hold the administration in any way responsible for it... Is FAR more connected to the deaths of those four Americans than the NRA is to these mass shootings. You're the same bunch of tools who ran around waving your arms and yelling "Islamophobia!" when people started talking about what led up to the Ft. Hood shooting

You know all those religious people whom you keep crying about because they took this chance to run their mouths about what they believe is the problem? Quit acting like them. If you're running around raging at the NRA then take a seat over there with those religious arsehats if you're going to behave like them. Most of all don't fly in to fits of indignant outrage when people "exploit" tragedies for "political" reasons unless you are prepared to stop doing it yourselves.

And you're not going to stop, I know it, and you know it.

The NRA is second to none when it comes to exploiting things for political purposes. Because mass murder doesn't aid their cause or make their message easier to sell, they ignore it.

But the NRA has fought diligently and purchased politicians by the dozens to ultimately defend the right for deranged people to have easy access to weapons that make killing sprees so much easier.